Andre Chenier

Andre Chenier (30 October 1762-25 July 1794) was a French poet who was executed during the Reign of Terror. He is the subject of Umberto Giordano's 1896 opera Andrea Chenier.

Biography
Andre Chenier was born in the Galata district of Istanbul, Ottoman Empire on 30 October 1762, the son of the French consul to Istanbul and a Greek woman (the sister of Adolphe Thiers' grandmother); he was the brother of National Convention president Marie-Joseph Chenier. From 1768 to 1775, the family lived in Morocco due to Louis Chenier's diplomatic career, and Andre Chenier would later move in with an aunt in Carcassonne in southern France. During the 1780s, he became a neoclassical poet, and he became an affiliate of the Feuillants. He escaped the September Massacres by staying in Normandy, and he was in favor of sparing King Louis XVI of France from execution. In 1794, Chenier was arrested due to his royalist views, and he was guillotined on 25 July 1794 towards the end of the Reign of Terror; just two days later, the Thermidorian Reaction overthrew the Jacobin Club.